Yesterday, while driving home and (mentally) reviewing some email communications relating to the Best Construction Blog competition, I heard a radio ad co-sponsored by Roots and MasterCard. The announcer communicated an athletic and heritage theme, and reported on support for young Canadian athletes, but didn’t mention a word of the rather major event occurring on the West Coast — The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
(This is a big deal, in different ways, for my extended family in Vancouver. One of my brothers decamped to Hawaii — his business is in an area subject to Olympic traffic chaos — and other employees can hold the fort while he suns on a beach. My 86-year-old mother gave up her seat to the opening ceremonies but could watch the torch relay a block from her home, and my second brother proceeded to sell the ticket on Ebay for a modest profit. Meanwhile, various relatives and friends are visiting my mom at her condo so they can catch the games in the crowded city. I’m staying in Ottawa, with the decision made two years ago that I would only pay the costs of bringing my wife and son to Vancouver for the games if we won the initial ticket lottery for Men’s Gold Hockey.)
Roots and Mastercard, of course, are outsiders at the Olympics. Roots had been a major sponsor and participant at previous games, and Visa, in co-ordinating and paying for its sponsorship, gained iron-clad exclusivity: You can only use the Visa card, certainly not MasterCard or American Express, at any Olympic venue or function. The Olympic organizers and official sponsors have set up all sorts of rules to prevent “cheating” and guerrilla marketing techniques from outsiders — including some really amazing limitations on the ability to post unwelcome commercial signs on private property. Competitors know, as well, that messing around with the Olympic trademark will almost inevitably result in communication from well-funded lawyers quite ready to take your business all the way to the courthouse cleaners if you dare to even emulate the Olympic rings in your marketing.
So what is going on here? Athletics and national pride, coupled with a spectacle and wads of marketing/endorsement stuff set the rules and rewards, and if you are in business, you need to dive through a minefield to decide if you want to play anywhere near this game. Personally, I’m happy to stay away even with family connections. I would rather play in a marketing contest where the chances of winning are more accessible and relevant.
That is the wonderful quality of contests like the Best Construction Blog competition. You don’t need any cash to enter, and you can (within the rules) take measures to encourage voting support if you wish — especially if you are a smaller business or consultant. You can, effectively, level the marketing playing field with a little initiative and creativity. Your prize: Recognition in media relevant to your marketplace, potentially higher search engine rankings, and (probably) a significant increase in the number of people following your blog and business.
Obviously, not all competitions are equally relevant but I think if your product/service is exceptional and the competition either allows you positive publicity or relationship-building opportunities, you should enter. More complex are fake competitions, set up just for the marketing purposes, with extremely high entry fees. These contests are structured so that if you enter you win and can use the competition’s marketing material to promote your business. You may also seemingly “win” even without paying, but the private competition organizers, holding the trademark to the event, restrict you from gaining any value from the process unless you pay. Not surprisingly, the competition, in this case, has far less to do with merit than cash. (But some legitimate businesses pay the fees, weighing the advertising costs of these phony competitions with conventional advertising — and realizing they can win, for sure, with the right amount of cash, by simply putting the funds in their marketing budget.)
Competitions sometimes have independent judging panels, or alternatively, they have rules which allow you to structure how the decision is finalized. In the real world both elements fit into the picture, as I suggested yesterday. Public and “open” competitions are almost always set up to favor one or just a few real competitors and if you are an outsider you have little if any chance of succeeding. The Best Construction Blog competition obviously allows you to encourage voting support, but you will find it easier on a personal/small business level than within large corporations where people work in big offices with a single computer server.